John N. Morris Papers, 1969-1985 | MS Manuscripts

John Nelson Morris (1931-November 25, 1997) was an author and educator. Born in Oxford, England, Morris spent part of his childhood on his grandfather's peach farm in Eagle Springs, North Carolina. He attended Augusta Military Academy in Fort Defiance, Virginia, and in 1953 received a bachelor's degree in English from Hamilton College. After two years as a Marine during the Korean War, Morris attended graduate school at Columbia University, earning a doctorate in 1964. He taught at the University of Delaware and at Columbia University before coming to Washington University in 1967. Morris taught poetry and 18th-century British literature for nearly 30 years in the Department of English, retiring in 1995.

Morris was the author of four books of poetry: A Schedule of Benefits, The Glass Houses, The Life Beside This One, and Green Business. His work was published in such magazines as Poetry, The New Yorker and The New Republic, and in 1978 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1979, he won the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 2002, Morris's Selected Poems and memoir, Then: Essays in Reconstruction, composed in the last years of his life during an arduous battle with pancreatic cancer were published.